Google needs to drastically change the way it calcs website PR and serp placement.

I've been all about seo lately. Which is good. Gives me something else to write about other than code. I also created a forum for my own website. And I also have been doing a lot of posts myself to PR 8 and 9 forums and blogs for good backlinks. I wouldn't call it spamming though. I at least add good relavant conversations to the forum in the process. Then in return I get a backlink. That I have no problem with. Morally or in my own forum.

All this has led me to believe that google needs to drastically change the way it calcs PR and serp placement. Lets take an example... if your girlfriend constantly flirts with other men, is it your fault that you become a jealous person? No, she created the green monster. Cause and effect. Much like its not the spammers fault. Google has created their monsters. Because of cause and effect, spammers have completely - not just a little - changed the landscape of the web. Spammer sites, forum, and blog posts are like web advertising. We have just began to accept their presence.

It's beyond stupid that I and billions of others have to go around creating backlinks in order to get placed.

John_Betong
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2013-04-19T16:36:25Z —
#2

EricWatson said:

Google needs to drastically change the way it calcs website PR and serp placement.

I've been all about seo lately. Which is good. Gives me something else to write about other than code. I also created a forum for my own website. And I also have been doing a lot of posts myself to PR 8 and 9 forums and blogs for good backlinks. I wouldn't call it spamming though. I at least add good relavant conversations to the forum in the process. Then in return I get a backlink. That I have no problem with. Morally or in my own forum.

All this has led me to believe that google needs to drastically change the way it calcs PR and serp placement. Lets take an example... if your girlfriend constantly flirts with other men, is it your fault that you become a jealous person? No, she created the green monster. Cause and effect. Much like its not the spammers fault. Google has created their monsters. Because of cause and effect, spammers have completely - not just a little - changed the landscape of the web. Spammer sites, forum, and blog posts are like web advertising. We have just began to accept their presence.

It's beyond stupid that I and billions of others have to go around creating backlinks in order to get placed.

Google has grown in a very short time no doubt because of their policies. I am curious to know if you think their growth is because of their original policies or the new trend is to change their policies for their own benefit.

Have you any suggestions as to how Google should change their calculation ranking policies?

PicnicTutorials
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2013-04-19T17:06:31Z —
#3

John_Betong said:

Google has grown in a very short time no doubt because of their policies. I am curious to know if you think their growth is because of their original policies or the new trend is to change their policies for their own benefit.

Have you any suggestions as to how Google should change their calculation ranking policies?

I would copy and paste it into here but then google would cry duplicate. And then this forum would be the one showing up in SERPS for said keyword.

esoomllub
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2013-04-19T18:42:58Z —
#4

So I get your frustration... but how would you recommend Google rank sites then? I'm not fan of Google, but they need some measurable metrics to rank results. If everyone perfectly implements an onsite and offsite SEO strategy, Google would be forced to return random results, right?

PicnicTutorials
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2013-04-19T19:01:01Z —
#5

esoomllub said:

So I get your frustration... but how would you recommend Google rank sites then? I'm not fan of Google, but they need some measurable metrics to rank results. If everyone perfectly implements an onsite and offsite SEO strategy, Google would be forced to return random results, right?

I know its far from perfect but they could use traffic as a measure for one like Alexa does. In order for Alexa to measure traffic the end user has to have a spammy type toolbar. And the developer can embed its traffic measure code. Not many do this and Alexa still manages to be a strong metric of importance. People would be much more inclined to embed some google code. Aka google analytics. I added the toolbar and embedded the code in my site and my Alex score drops by 20,000 a day.

Plus the suggestion I made in my link above. Plus if i was a smarty smart nerd and google was paying me 200,000 grand a year im sure I could come up with some better ideas.

esoomllub
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2013-04-19T21:14:23Z —
#6

lol. I was not arguing so much as pointing out that in my mind, there is no real good answer. I personally like Alexa, but it is SO easy to game that I'm sure the SEO industry would just alter their strategy to meet that game too. I try to build links in a reasonable amount and try to have good content, and just generally try to give people a reason to come back for my clients. Because no matter how Google (or Bing) alter their algorithm, a person who bookmarks my client sites is going to make it back.

webcosmo
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2013-04-19T21:24:14Z —
#7

Its clear that a change in G's algorithm would be good, and its true it forced people to spam to attract traffic. I hate the SEO competition that makes people work harder and harder to rank some websites, instead of Google showing the real relevant results. But, i think they are trying to improve every day, and today's results are far better than 3 years ago when there was some sites that automatically generated some spammy pages based on what consumer would want to search for in Google. You couldn`t find a real result, first 2 pages were all same site with spammy pages.

Stevie_D
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2013-04-19T21:56:56Z —
#8

In a nutshell, the problem is that WHATEVER algorithm Google used, people would find ways to subvert and abuse it. Google has got better and better at ignoring spammy and seeded links (so I think your strategy of sowing links on random high-PR pages is unlikely to be effective, especially in the longer term), because it knows that the vast majority of links in user-generated content are self-promotional and therefore worthless. Popularity by hit-rate would be even easier to fake through robots and proxy servers and so on, with the additional downside that it would require people to install Google software. And while Google is going for world domination, ut would prefer to get there by fair means rather than exploiting its monopoly position. in other words, it wants to succeed because it is the best search engine for returning the most relevant results for a prrson's queries, which it CAN'T do if it is semi-arbitrarily excluding any sites that aren't running Google Analytics.

PicnicTutorials
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2013-04-20T01:15:28Z —
#9

webcosmo said:

Its clear that a change in G's algorithm would be good, and its true it forced people to spam to attract traffic. I hate the SEO competition that makes people work harder and harder to rank some websites, instead of Google showing the real relevant results. But, i think they are trying to improve every day, and today's results are far better than 3 years ago when there was some sites that automatically generated some spammy pages based on what consumer would want to search for in Google. You couldn`t find a real result, first 2 pages were all same site with spammy pages.

Another good way would be to somehow track how many people bookmark it. That would probably be the most true way. I wrote another good one about googles new socialism method here http://www.websitecodetutorials.com/code/seo/googles-2013-socialism-update.php. While the results are definitely more diverse they are socialist in nature. After the update free .blogspots were performing better than my sites. That is until I went seo crazy for a few months. FYI that did fix my placement so proof to me seo is not dead.

alabamaseo
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2013-04-20T08:02:28Z —
#10

Google has gotten very good at detecting Spam and sorting sites by authority (I would argue much better than Alexa, if Google was to list sites in order of popularity). I try to stay somewhat active amongst the blackhat community (old friends and entertainment only), and I know many more people who lost their livelihood than are still able to rank their sites. Most of the people spamming nowadays are the equivalent of a quarterback throwing a hail mary; they are doing it because they are hopeless and don't know of another way, and most of them are not capable of speaking good enough English to write enticing content. Just because people are still spamming doesn't mean their sites are ranking well. If you need proof, do a quick search for the term "viagra" (one of the most commonly spammed keywords) and see how many of the top sites look like they spam the web to get their backlinks.

I believe that Google already implements many other factors that show positive user experience like unique visitors, bounce rate, pages viewed per visit, length of visit, load speed, etc. I would even be willing to bet that conversion rate from an Adwords campaign plays a factor. They have said many times that they want to make legitimate popularity and user experience the main factors that determine a site's authority, and they have spent many years working towards this goal.

Try thinking from Google's perspective: who is most likely to read the documentation they put out regarding the specifics of their algorithm? People who are trying to rip off their algorithm to start their own search engine and people who are trying to learn how to exploit their algorithm to make their sites rank higher. What is Google's incentive to put out 100% accurate information? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to only broadcast what they want people to think? Plus, their algorithm changes every day, they could say something publicly honestly and in good conscience and then change the code the next day to better fight the people who are trying to abuse it.

Their goal is to provide a better experience for their users, and I'm sure they have at least considered using all the information they get through Analytics (why would they have bothered to make their Analytics system if it did not help their core business in some way?). Google has employed some really sharp guys over the past few years, and I am confident that there is nothing we could suggest that hasn't already been thought of in-house. I'm not saying its impossible, just highly unlikely.

It should also be noted that Page Rank is a completely separate algorithm than their search algorithm. They publicly claim that PR does play a roll in their ranking algorithm, but it is certainly not the most important attribute. Page Rank is more of a trophy than anything. There is a good chance that they want spammers to have low search rankings and high PR so that they will continue wasting their time on tactics that won't work.

alabamaseo
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2013-04-20T08:20:27Z —
#11

EricWatson said:

Another good way would be to somehow track how many people bookmark it. That would probably be the most true way. I wrote another good one about googles new socialism method here http://www.websitecodetutorials.com/code/seo/googles-2013-socialism-update.php. While the results are definitely more diverse they are socialist in nature. After the update free .blogspots were performing better than my sites. That is until I went seo crazy for a few months. FYI that did fix my placement so proof to me seo is not dead.

I like your article relating Google and Obama haha

SEO is far from dead, honestly its easier now than it ever has been. There are ways to spend those countless hours promoting your site effectively. My favorite method is targeting reporters. I have even flown reporters in to have a hands on experience in the industry to encourage them to write about their trip and reference our site with a link. The result of this? Several positive articles in several authoritative newspapers, and the next day many bloggers and other newspapers ran with the story giving us even more links. We took this site from ranking on page 3 to number 1 for two of the most competitive "jobs" keywords in the industry in 6 weeks.

Even if you don't have the budget to fly reporters out to your office, there are many creative ways to generate content that will draw their attention. If you spend your hours working in the right direction and not just trying to see how many backlinks you can get, you will be rewarded in time.

utbsg
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2013-04-20T17:28:11Z —
#12

I did some work at G..and i can tell you the guys there are so smart...there are all sorts of stuff they are playing with like --personalised search (which has brought out the SEO doom sayers). unfortunately links still remain the ultimate juice.

IMHO links from commercial sites will soon count for nothing and the only links that will matter will be from .edu or .gov sites ..and when i say count for nothing ..i mean count for very little.

Just my IMHHO...= Crystal ball..LOL

Green_Moon
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2013-04-24T21:42:09Z —
#13

Let me first say that I know NOTHING of the inner workings of the G algo, but I believe they already discount heavily things like comment spam, forum signatures, forum profile spam, "article directories" that are created for nothing more than self-linking. etc...

Unfortunately, there are tens of thousands of so-called SEO experts who are using methods that have virtually no benefit and may even hurt a site's search engine position. Why? Reason #3: they don't know any better. Reason #2: it can be easily automated and takes essentially no effort. Reason #1: there are hundreds of thousands of website owners who don't know that it doesn't work and are willing to pay money because the so-called experts have guaranteed to "get them on the first page of Google."

I would copy and paste it into here but then google would cry duplicate. And then this forum would be the one showing up in SERPS for said keyword.

Definitely a Southern California outlook on life...

Debbie

AdWords_Expert
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2013-04-25T20:20:24Z —
#15

I like the way Google does it, a) it keeps AdWords Managers like myself busy & b) it keeps people who can't afford backlinks, comments, blog writers etc off the serps. The idea is, its a lot of hard manual work to rank for competitive keywords.

PicnicTutorials
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2013-04-25T20:32:14Z —
#16

AdWords_Expert said:

I like the way Google does it, a) it keeps AdWords Managers like myself busy & b) it keeps people who can't afford backlinks, comments, blog writers etc off the serps. The idea is, its a lot of hard manual work to rank for competitive keywords.

If that were the case I wouldn't mind so much either I guess. At least it paid. But now I got every Tom dick and Harry right there next to me. Most of them not even taking the time to create a google places page.

system
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2013-05-04T05:15:02Z —
#17

when ever google change their policy it helps them who are use to in white hat SEO, have good unique contain and natural traffic. So I think its cool.

AdWords_Expert
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2013-05-05T21:24:03Z —
#18

Just keep your head up, when you have all the pieces (Facebook, Google+, social) and others don't you will win assuming you do all the rest. Content, links, comments, citations, videos...

peterrulesrock
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2013-05-06T22:29:58Z —
#19

Yes I too agree with your point of view and according to my knowledge soon Google is going to announce author ranking where ranking would be made from the authorship made by google to the respective website.This prevents from spam content and avoids duplication.

EnderMB
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2013-05-09T09:06:43Z —
#20

While I agree with this article, we also need to take into account whether SEO types are actually benefiting their website or not.

Yes, there are spammers all across the web, and Google have effectively created an entire industry of idiots spamming the web, chanting "content is king". However, I'm willing to bet that 90-95% of all SEO work done by ANYONE is largely a wasted effort.

My reasons for believing this is my first-hand experience on this forum, and in the wide world of SEO. The sheer amount of crap I've read and heard from people that take blogs from nobodies as gospel, and the level on inaccurate or largely dated information coming from cheap SEO sweat shops in India makes me largely believe that any benefits these SEO analysts actually get are a natural effect of the web at large.

They are much like rain dancers. They dance in the sun all day, and when it rains they claim success. They tell others that if you dance in a certain way that they can make rain too. These idiots will then copy the first dancer, and when it rains again the cycle continues.

Google's search algorithm is a black box, and anyone with even half a brain would realise that trying to decipher a complicated algorithm behind a black box is a near impossible feat. The only real thing to know about SEO is to do your own research, and to lay the groundwork for a successful website. Anyone with any knowledge of machine learning or web parsing will know that no computer can read a web page and know 100% that content is "good". Google runs from back-links, and over time Google has become very good at sifting through SEO spam and genuine quality. It's why we see so many people on here complaining about the "panda update".

In my mind, the smart people continue to do the same thing they've always done. They treat SEO as a subset of a successful online marketing campaign, and build a brand. What we experience is the aftermath of a bunch of rain dancers thinking they can make it rain.